As the police of Milwaukee have issued Facebook with a search warrant after a pair of teenage girls in Milwaukee, US, allegedly using Facebook Live to broadcast sexual acts between them and a teenage boy. According to the reports, the teenagers from the Barack Obama School skipped their classes to conduct the live-stream, which some classmates watched from their phones during the health class. The police of Milwaukee has requested the social media giant Facebook for the pictures, status history, and videos, along with the user information, such as name, email, and IP address. The students of the Barack Obama School were able to watch the live stream through the Facebook app on their smartphones during the class. Hence, the two teenage girls in the video may be charged with “exposing a child to harmful material” as the video was just made available to the underage students. The Milwaukee Public Schools released a statement which states that “The school immediately notified proper authorities and cooperation with the investigation. We took appropriate disciplinary action against those involved, which would be in addition to any outside consequences they may face”. Moreover, a spokesperson from the social media giant Facebook said that the company do not comment on specific cases and sent the following comment on company policies around Facebook Live, hence also stated that “We believe the vast majority of people are using Facebook Live to come together and share experiences in the moment with their friends and family. But if someone does violate our Community Standards while using Live, we want to interrupt these streams as quickly as possible when they’re reported to us. So we’ve given people a way to report violations during a live broadcast”. Also added that “We do understand and recognize that there are unique challenges when it comes to content and safety for Live videos. It’s a serious responsibility, we work hard to strike the right balance between enabling expression while providing a safe and respectful experience. We’re deeply committed to improving the effectiveness of how we handle reports of live content that violates our Community Standards”.
